Fourteen 5-minute videos: A class about a shoe (personalized and using a poem to include history, science, math, and language)

You can reach this playlist at http://tinyurl.com/metcenterplaylist

Part 1 of 14:  The students take turns reading the Bertoldt Brecht poem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0aLz5Kpyyc&feature=youtu.be

part 1 of 14  

This is the first of 14  5-minute videos from a recorded session in November 2005.

This will give you an indication of the direction that a single teacher can go to weave:

science

math (percent, statistics)

geography

poetry

history

With some effort, a foreign language could be added.

LESSON PLAN

Start with Bertoldt Brecht and a poem about a worker's work.

http://allpoetry.com/poem/8503711-A-Worker-Reads-History-by-Bertolt_Brecht

Here is the text... and it forms the core of the lesson / "advisory" session.

The teacher asks students to read the poem and then interpret the poem through the shoe.

Here is the text of the poem

A Worker Reads History

Who built the seven gates of Thebes?

The books are filled with names of kings.

Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?

And Babylon, so many times destroyed.

Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima's houses,

That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?

In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished

Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome

Part 2 of 14  

Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom

Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song.

Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend

The night the seas rushed in,

The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.

Young Alexander conquered India.

He alone?

Caesar beat the Gauls.

Was there not even a cook in his army?

Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears?

Frederick the Great triumphed in the Seven Years War.

Who triumphed with him?

Each page a victory

At whose expense the victory ball?

Every ten years a great man,

Who paid the piper?

So many particulars.

So many questions.

SOURCE of the poem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0aLz5Kpyyc&feature=youtu.be 

Steve Math Teacher

Here are the links to the next five videos.

Part 3 of 14:  Students describe details of the shoe

Part 2 of 14

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNPCNFS_jdc

Part 3 of 14

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYKeRPZr7kI

Students describe details of the shoe.

Part 4 of 14

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3zhffdZSfE

Look at the poem and then look at the shoe differently.  Look at the shoe through the eyes of the poem's author.   "There are all of these other people involved in the process, why don't they get credit?"  So many questions...   Great things are built but only a few people get credit... 

Part 5 of 14
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJUpNslo5eE

Part 6 of 14

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MpfVXGeONM   "Read what you wrote"

Jordan gets the credit for the shoe but we don't know who the people are who made the shoe.

Part 7 of 14   Look at the labels in your t-shirts, your coats, your hats...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqZLnb9QWPw

Part 8 of 14

Let's remove the map from the wall

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0JPhK-KHtw

7 of 14
look at labels on
your clothes

Part 9 of 14

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZh0m_6Xw3w

Part 10 of 14    Students put pins on the map

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKH-lI-gIF0

Part 11 of 14   How did you figure that it was about 60 percent?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-kCBMQsu_I

Part 12 of 14

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuMzvZKer2w

Part 13 of 14

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ryFMBBnH0

Video 14 of 14

Part 14 of 14
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXc6aFuVq-k

At the end of the viewing, please write at least three things that you notice from each photo.

The entire 14-video playlist is available here http://tinyurl.com/metcenterplaylist

An additional reading:   Suggestions to Principals by S. McCrea

SCRIBD:  LINK